EDITORIAL - Drug trafficking hub

Elite police Special Action Force teams, complete with armored vehicles, were deployed in an effort to stop illegal activities. Periodic raids were conducted. The most notorious drug dealers were isolated from the rest.

And yet here we are again, aghast at reports that drug trafficking in Metro Manila and other areas continues to be directed from within the New Bilibid Prison in Muntinlupa. The trafficker, drug convict Rusico Ygot, used the internet for his business with the help of his girlfriend Jocelyn Encilla, who operated from her house in Cebu, according to the Department of Justice, which has jurisdiction over the Bureau of Corrections. The DOJ is conducting a probe into the latest drug scandal to hit the NBP.

Instead of calling in SAF teams and armored vehicles again, prison authorities may want to try something simpler: an honest-to-goodness crackdown on the use of any gadget that allows internet access, particularly cell phones and tablets, by prisoners and their visitors.

This is not a human rights violation. By the nature of their legal status, convicted prisoners cannot have all the civil liberties enjoyed by people who have not broken the law and been placed behind bars. The NBP has landlines for the use of inmates. More landlines can be installed to allow prisoners broader opportunities for communication. The phone number and person called plus the nature of the call – to consult with a lawyer, for example, or contact relatives – can be recorded.

Inmates’ visitors must deposit their cell phones and other gadgets at the entrance to the prison facilities. This is done even in certain security offices and foreign embassies. It shouldn’t raise howls of protest in the country’s main prison. The government can also invest in metal detectors for the prisons.

The most high-tech security scanners, of course, will prove no match for crooked prison personnel who allow inmates to continue with their criminal activities even behind bars. Only corruption can explain how high-value drug traffickers managed in the recent past to bring in Jacuzzi-equipped bathtubs and expensive household appliances, and to live in air-conditioned comfort in a national prison. With this latest scandal, the government must deal decisively with corruption in the NBP and Bureau of Corrections, sparing no one from punishment.